Easy to be fooled by the broken, seemingly ancient statuary under the glass dome. The penis of Achilles? The toenails of Boudicca? The orbital socket of Goliath? Or all three, juxtaposed for shock value?

Photo

Credit
Tamara Shopsin

But that’s where the casual observer is drawn into hubristic error. For the true treasure on view is a bed of rare, Arabian “flesh sand,” still holding its angry, sunburned hue, which, when added to cooked human flesh, gives whoever tastes the morsel a complete, all-senses memory immersion of the most sublime moment of the deceased’s life.

The fact that such an unprecedented amount of the flesh sand is seen here — no more than a thimbleful has ever been collected at one time — either suggests 1) a brilliant forgery, 2) a larger, more unspeakable trove of delights and horrors just off camera, or 3) an approaching apocalyptic feast.

This was at Woolaroc, the former ranch of the oil tycoon Frank Phillips in the Osage Hills near Tulsa, Okla., that is now a museum and nature preserve. Its name comes from mushing the words woods, lakes and rocks together.

The caption on the case read: “The only privately owned dinosaur egg in the world. Guaranteed to be ninety-five million years old.”